Japan and Africa (1013-1020)

Imperial and Imperialist Japan: MH

• After WWI, Japan was thought to be apart of one of the major powers.

• Japan's International agreements:
• 1) Wasthington Conference1922- limit naval development and to abandon Shandong of China.
• 2) Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928- renounced war as an instrument of national policy.
• During the Great Depression in Japan- production declined, layoffs, and declining trade. This made radical politics and socail unrest.
• Many people wnated protection for labor unions and welfare legislation but those ideas were blocked.
• Many people blamed the government for the economic problems.
• Radical political groups 1) xenophobic nationalists- preserver Japanese culture and remove werstern influences
• Prime miniter Inukai Tsuyoshi was murdered.
• Japan wanted control of Manchuria region that was chinese territory.

The Mukden Incident- JV

• The night of 18 September 1931
• Japanese troops blew up a few feet of rail on the Japaense-built South Manchuria Railway north of Mukuden.

According to the picture, the circled part of the rail is where the rail was blown up.

• The Japanese accused the Chinese.
• This started the war between the Japanese and Chinese troops.
• The civilian government tried to stop the tensions, but by 1932 Japanese troops controlled all of Manchuria.
• The control of Manchuria ensured Japan's dominance over long-term economic and industrial development of the region.
• The Japanese established a pupppet state called Manchukuo, but in reality Japan had absorbed Manchuria into its empire.
• Challenging the international peace system; it resulted in the beginning of war.

-Leader of the Guomindang (Nationalist Party) ,, appealed to the Leage of Nations to stop the Japanese aggression.

• The Japanese responded by leaving the league.
• Chinese gained the moral high ground in international eyes, but nothing was done to stop the aggression.
• This reaction set a pattern for for future respones to the actions of expansionist nations like Japan.
• The Great War and the Great Depression made significant contributions to the ongoing nationalist and political upheavals throughout Asia.
• Global economic crisis led to some lessening of European imperial influence.

A photograph of Jiang Jieshi

• Only the after the next world war did the turmoail with Asian nations get resolved.

AFRICA UNDER COLONIAL DOMINATION-NC

• The Great War and the Great Depression similarly complicated quests for national independence and unity in Africa.
• Due to colonial ties, African colonies were forced to be participants of the Great War for Europe.
• The forced recruitment of military personnel led some Africans to raise arms against their Colonial overlords.
• The peacemakers in Paris, however, ignored African pleas for social and political reform.
• The imposition of a rapacious form of capitalism destroyed the self-sufficiency of many African economies.
• As a result, African economic life became enmeshed in the global economy.
• The persistence of colonialism led to the development of African nationalism and the birth of embryonic nationalist movements.
• During the following decades after the Great War, African intellectuals searched for new national identities and looked forward to the construction of nations devoid of European domination and exploration.

Africa and the Great War-NC

• The Great War had profound impact of Africa.
• The conflict of 1914-1918 affected Africans because many belligerents were colonial powers who ruled over the greater part of Africa.
• Every African colony took sides in the war, except for Spanish controlled colonies.
• The German colonial administration faced the combined colonial forces of great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, and Portugal.

Colonial Possession in Africa-NC

War in Africa: (SG)

• Although Germany was late to imperialize, they acquired land in Africa
• The German imperial empire in Africa included Togo, Cameroon, German South-West Africa, and German East Africa
• Germany faced competition in the colonies during the war after it began in 1914
• British forces attempted to demobilize German ports
• French forces had the goal of recovering lost territory in the Cameroon
• Outnumbered ten to one, the Germans avoided defeat until the last days of the war
• There were more than a million African soldiers participated in military campaigns
• They were told to kill the enemy white man (contrary to their prior teaching that a white man's life was too important to interfere with)
• Africans also participated in other services during the war, such as supply carriers

  African soldiers participated in WWI

• The Germans recruited personnel in the following ways:
• On a purely voluntary basis
• In levies supplied by African chiefs that consisted of volunteer and impressed personnel
• Forman conscription
• British, France, and Belgium also utilized colonial personnel in their forces:
• France made military service compulsory for all males ages 25-28 (getting around 480,000 by the time all was said and done)
• Britain organized a compulsory service order for all males ages 18-25
• Belgium impressed more than 500,000 porters
• In the end, more than 150,000 African soldiers were dead, and more suffered injuries

Challenges to European Authority: (SG)

• Most of the attention was focused not the battles occurring in Europe during the war
• European personnel was spread out thin in the first place, but the conflict in Africa caused them to spread even thinner
• Colonial groups took advantage of this, uprising when the European countries could least afford it
• This caused the countries to have to send resources that were much needed in Europe
• Revolts began to take place in Africa against European authorities
• Some were the constant resistance of European authority
• Some were the recognition of weakness in European authority by those who were contemplating revolt
• European countries, despite scares, were successful in putting down all the revolts.

The Colonial Economy: (JHO)

• Decades after WWI Africa witnessed a thorough transformation of African economic life.
• The colonial powers pursued two different key economic objectives:
  • They wanted to make sure that the colonies paid for institutions such as bureaucracies, judiciary, police, and military forces which kept the natives subjugated.
  • They developed export-oriented economies characterized by the exchange of unprocessed raw materials or minimally processed cash crops for manufactured goods from abroad.
• In pursuit of these goal colonial powers destroyed functioning independent African economies. Which caused natives to become dependent on European economics.

Infrastructure: (JHO)

• Colonial economies first started to show up in the form of ports facilities, roads, railways, and telegraph wires.
• These forms of European conquest spread European powers further into Africa itself, and also the agricultural and mineral wealth to the outside world.
• Europeans claimed that they gave Africa its first modern infrastructure, but they were the main beneficiaries, and most of the time neglecting the African peoples needs.
• Africans paid for the infrastructure with their labor and taxes, while Europeans never considered the needs of local African economies. (DG)

Farming and Mining: (JHO)

• Farming and Mining were the two main enterprises of Africa's economy
• In order for farmers to keep up with taxes they had to become cash crop farmers or seek wage labor or plantations and mines.
• In areas of extensive white settlement, farmers had to start settler agriculture. Which was production of agricultural needs for the international market.
• Ex. In South Africa, the government reserved 88% of all land for whites, who made up just 20% of the population.
• Colonials mining enterprises relying on African labor loomed large in parts of central and southern Africa (DG)
• Many farmers moved towards central Africa in order to work in extracting minerals from the ground.
• Copper, gold, and Diamonds were the main minerals they work to extract.
• Labor migrations were started and it set in motion recruitment practices that persisted throughout the 20th century

Labor Practices: (JHO)

• Colonial officials enforced labor on the natives when taxation didn't create a malleable labor force.
• Variants of slavery were prominent features at this time.
• "We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limbs. Compulsory labor is the corollary to our occupation of this country." Quote from a colonial administrator about forced labor.
• This mindset led to the brutal treatment of the African peoples as a whole. Where the Africans weren't viewed as people, but expendable work mules.

African with scars on his back from being beaten.
This shows just a small part of the brutal way
they were treated.

African Nationalism: (DG)

• Many Africans were disapointed that their contributions to the war went unrewarded. In place of anticipated social reforms or some degree of greater political participation came an extension and consolidation of the colonial system.
• Ideas concerning self-determination, articulated by US President Woodrow Wilson during the war, and the notion of the accountability of colonial powers that had been sown during the war gained adherents among a group of African nationalists. These ideas influenced the growth of African nationalism and the development of incipient nationalist movements.

Africa's New Elite

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• Colonialism prompted the emergence of a novel African social class, sometimes called the "New Elite." This elite derived its staus and place in society from employment and education. The upper echelons of Africa's elite class contained high-ranking cilvil servants, physicians, lawyers, and writers, most of whom had studied abroad either in wester Europe or sometimes in the United States.
• Jomo Kenyatta (1895-1978) -An immensely articulate nationalist who later led Kenya to independence from the British.
• Because colonianlism had introduced Africans to European ideas and ideologies, African nationalists frequently embraced the European concept of the nation as a means of forging unity among disparate African Groups.

Forms of Nationalism

• Race figured as an important concept in another important strain of African nationalism, which originated in the western hemisphere among the descendants of slaves.
• Representative of the Pan-Africanism was the Jamaican nationalist leader Marcus Garvey (1887 - 1940)

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